Drone Attacks Inside Pakistan Will Continue, CIA Chief Says; Panetta Calls Strikes 'Successful' at Disrupting Insurgents

Legislation introduced in the Senate last year by Vice President Biden, and soon to be sponsored by his successor as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), ranking Republican, calls for about $1.5 million a year in economic and development assistance for Pakistan over the next five years.

A report released yesterday by the Atlantic Council said that at least double that amount is needed from the United States and the international community if Pakistan is to be brought back "from the brink." Pakistan, it said, "is on a rapid trajectory toward becoming a failing or failed state."

In a report last year, under the leadership of James L. Jones, who is now the national security adviser, the Atlantic Council warned that the West was "not winning in Afghanistan." Those words were repeated yesterday by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in his first major foreign policy speech since losing the presidential election to Obama in November. "Let us not shy from the truth," McCain said in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, "but let us not be paralyzed by it either."

McCain chastised "some [who] suggest it is time to scale back our ambitions in Afghanistan -- to give up on nation-building and instead focus narrowly on our counterterrorism objectives, by simply mounting operations aimed at killing or capturing terrorist leaders and destroying their networks."

Obama, while calling for improved governance in Afghanistan, has publicly suggested that the United States adopt the "very limited goal" of ensuring that "Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for launching terrorist attacks" against the United States.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.